Spin

Origins

The term spin originated with the spinning of yarn or fabric, or the weaving of a tale or a story. William Safire, political columnist and former speechwriter for President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew, suggested in 1975 that spinning was used in the 1950s as a means of telling events; the “spin on a story.” Others, including political scientist John Anthony Maltese and media researcher Jerry Palmer, attribute the beginnings of journalistic spin to the Nixon Administration's office of Communications (1969–74), the goals of which were to ensure that the administration's political team disseminated the agreed upon “truth” so that all media received the same story. These spin goals remain top priorities for political and corporate handlers and other “spin doctors.”

Public relations (PR) experts have long utilized media exposure to publicize a product or company, or to further an agenda, but spinning is more than simply a PR maneuver. Spin professionals actively seek to seize control of a story from journalists and thereby exploit media audience reach. Spin professionals seek to use news media to directly influence audiences. As politics is so determined by public opinion, spinning, or spin control, is widely employed in the management of candidates, elected officials, and political issues.

In order to emphasize positive portrayals and minimize negative or controversial aspects in media coverage, spin professionals maintain a strong relationship with news media and journalists. They provide information structured to promote the desired spin about an individual/event/company, by adhering to journalistic conventions such as story construction. To ease this process, spin professionals understand how journalists research and write stories and take advantage of that process for their clients.

Selling the Spin

All news stories are dependent on sources. Potential spin of a news story depends upon sources that are readily available, especially trustworthy, or intriguing. Spin professionals can serve as sources or can provide journalists with sources that will tell the story from the desired angle.

For spin professionals, the ongoing nature of news requires that journalists be provided with plenty of information surrounding news events to ensure that an agreeable package of news will result. Journalists experience pressure to complete multiple stories per day, work under extreme deadline pressures, and have to balance their time in checking facts, background and historical research, and interviewing sources for multiple potential news items. Providing helpful information tends to increase the likelihood of journalists with approaching deadlines and little time for their own legwork to disseminate a story as the spin professionals have constructed it.

The threshold of the story—whether the events have importance for many people—is another crucial news value utilized by spin professionals. In order to appeal to diverse audiences, stories need to be of interest to a wide variety of people. Journalists seek to make news stories unique but applicable to the larger tapestry of daily events for consumers. It is in this balance that news values and the decision of how to spin the story become exceedingly important. Spin professionals take advantage of this balance by emphasizing implications of the event(s) for the greatest number of people, increasing the importance it will have to audiences—and thus to journalists serving these audiences. Again, with spin professionals shaping the news values while providing information to journalists, thereby saving them work, it is more likely that the desired spin on new stories will be distributed “as is” through media outlets. An example of successful spinning would be the reporting on the economic stimulus package of 2008. With information from the federal government and Internal Revenue Service, journalists focused on telling taxpayers how to get their checks, amounts that could be expected, and any exemptions or special circumstances surrounding receiving payment. Less visible in the news coverage is discussion of where the money was coming [Page 1313]from, potential ethical issues in redistributing these finances, and the possible ramifications the stimulus package might have for the economy in the future.

...